


Like gold to airy thinness beat

by MidLifeLez



Category: Holby City
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Long-Distance Relationship, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 09:46:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13679199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidLifeLez/pseuds/MidLifeLez
Summary: "Happy Valentine's Day," she types, then adds every remotely heart-related emoji she can find.





	Like gold to airy thinness beat

Bernie is already awake when the alarm sounds at 6am; shutting it off, she sits up and plants her feet on the tiled floor, her hands tucked under her thighs as she looks at her toes, flexing them absent-mindedly.  She keeps forgetting to close the curtains – keeps deciding, actually, that she doesn’t want to get out of bed once she’s hung up on a call with Serena, instead shutting out the lingering light of the city by burrowing into the pillows – but the sun isn’t yet up and has only cut the darkness through with a touch of light. It has already warmed the air though, the flat feeling stuffy even as the last of the twilight drizzle flecks the window. There are traffic sounds from the street below but it’ll be another hour before the rush really starts, and she’ll be at the hospital by then.

Serena wasn’t even meant to be here by now, wasn’t coming for at least another week, but Bernie can’t shrug off the maudlin feeling she woke up with, no matter how hot she runs the shower. Serena hasn’t set foot in this apartment (has seen a bit of it via the phone, Bernie showing her the kitchen and one wall of the living area before Serena had said it was making her dizzy) or even in Kenya, let alone Nairobi, so there’s no reason, Bernie tells herself as she brushes her teeth, for it to feel like Serena is missing, but it does. And Bernie knows better than most how to deal with being separated from loved ones for prolonged periods, has had enough damned practice, but still she sighs heavily as she dresses. She drapes the scarf she bought the last time they were together around her neck and then peels it off again when it brings no comfort.

Sitting with a huff on the unmade bed, she lifts the phone from her pillow and opens her conversation with Serena. It is dominated by the time difference – “Got held up. You still awake, sweetheart?” – and lately their plans to see East Africa together. Bernie hadn’t hesitated for a second before reassuring Serena that she should stay in Holby, knows Serena is doing the right thing (for Hanssen, for the hospital, and perhaps even for herself, despite the ghosts she’s had to confront). It’s one of the things that Bernie loves about Serena, that she would fly straight to Holby and be there to put the hospital right before she’s so much as unpacked her suitcase. It’s just that some days, none of them makes her absence any easier to bear.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” she types, then adds every remotely heart-related emoji she can find. “#missyou.” She looks at the screen for a moment, and then deletes that last bit because Serena knows; types “#loveyou” instead – Serena knows that, too, but saying so doesn’t feel selfish. Bernie hits send and stands, sliding the phone into her pocket. _Big breath in, shoulders back; that’s it, Wolfe, onwards and upwards._ She pulls her bag onto her shoulder as the door clicks shut behind her.     

* 

Serena reaches for her phone almost as soon as she wakes up, palming the bedside table until she feels the familiar slab of leather. While Bernie was in Sudan and she was in Nepal, Serena had struggled with the late nights waiting to hear Bernie’s voice; had been grumpy at their abbreviated calls, Bernie almost never failing to hear her stifled yawns and sending her to bed. Now in the UK she has the better side of the deal: sitting down to speak to a drowsy Bernie at eight in the evening, and waking to a text message each morning. This morning she looks at the rows of heart shapes that almost fill the screen and can’t suppress the giggle that it prompts. Sometimes she wishes she had never revealed to Bernie the secrets of the emoji keyboard (“the parmigiana sounds amazing, chef, but please don’t send me aubergines”), but others… other times she is glad to be the recipient of Bernie’s novice enthusiasm.

“I thought we agreed we weren’t doing Valentine’s?” she types back, sitting up against the headboard so that she can use both thumbs. Serena had told herself that she’d booked a hotel on her return because it was so last minute, because she didn’t want to disturb Jason, because she was only back for a week or two, but there was no avoiding the house after deciding to stay in Holby. She’s been trying to see all the good ways in which it is still home even when she can only think of the bad, and the comfort of this bed is a pretty decent one, despite the empty pillow beside her.

Serena rubs her thumb against the side of the phone, wishing it was Bernie she was holding, even if only for a moment. “Glad you ignored me,” she types, “though don’t make a habit of it.” She goes to her most-used emojis and selects the winking face. It’s there alongside a rainbow of hearts, the kissing face, and the eye roll (because Bernie will occasionally still send her an aubergine, for a laugh). “I love you too. Have a good day, *don’t* stay at the hospital until I call you later. Maybe go and have a nice hot meal? Sxxx”

She doesn’t wait for a response; she has learned from experience that Bernie tends to shove her phone in her locker with her civvies and forget about it until at least lunchtime. And anyway she can hear Jason in the kitchen. Serena is enjoying their breakfasts together, when they have them; it had been a shock to realise how far apart they had drifted, though she tuts at her own blindness to it happening, and she’s enjoying the chance to reconnect.

“There’s a fresh packet of coffee in the cupboard on the right,” she calls down, pulling her dressing gown off the back of the bedroom door.

“It’s already in the cafetiere!” Jason shouts back. Serena smiles and ties the gown around her waist. With the briefest of glances at the door to Elinor’s bedroom, she heads downstairs.

* 

Bernie is well used to what’s involved in setting up a trauma unit by now. She knows the first couple of weeks drag, weighed down with bureaucracy, and the next month passes in a blur and the month after that, when it’s up and running and people like it if she’s there but no longer lose their nerve if she isn’t, is when she starts to wonder if she couldn’t be somewhere else, lending a hand. She had spoken about it with Cam, had seen the concern flicker in his features, but it’s not about running. She’s not running, she is simply in flight; she is soaring.

Today it’s long past lunchtime before Bernie can even think about checking her phone. Right now she has a trauma unit only on paper: she has money to spend and instruments to order and eager staff to train. It’s the sort of admin she can live with, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t get an adrenaline rush when the ED calls for her services. She returns after three-and-a-half hours, a scrub cap crumpled in her right fist, her hair sweaty and matted. Samuel – her co-lead, the man who’ll be at the helm once she’s gone – looks at her, a silent question, and Bernie nods, twitches her lips into a smile. Thirty-eight-year-old woman, abdominal trauma; more blood than Bernie has seen in almost a week, but they pulled her through. She gestures over her shoulder towards the changing room and turns, already pulling at the neck of the scrub top that’s stuck fast to her skin with sweat.

Her second shower of the day is cooler than the first and by now Bernie feels calmer, more sanguine about the wait to see Serena. Roughly towelling off her hair and tying it back damp and mussed but shampooed, at least, she sits on the bench and opens her notifications, reads Serena’s words about getting a proper meal as her stomach growls loudly. She tears open a Snickers and steals a guilty glance at the door to the ward, as if Serena herself might come in at this moment and chastise her.

*

It’s quiet on the ward – quiet by AAU standards, that is. There’s no chance that the red phone will sound to herald the arrival of an especially broken body, or bodies, lives hanging by a thread, and Serena is bemused to think that she might miss it. Perhaps just the idea of it; its absence means she has time to chat to Ric, to try and process what’s happening with Jason and Greta. To exchange whispers about Ric’s ongoing care with Donna. To chat with Evie.

“I’ve found the laptop, but is it OK if I use the other desk?” Evie asks her, and Serena frowns, nonplussed.

Evie takes her by the hand and leads her to the office: on Serena’s desk is the biggest, most ostentatious bouquet of flowers either of them has ever seen. It has palm fronds. It has bright, alien oranges and Shiraz-reds and it has vivid, blushing pinks – Serena isn’t an ignoramus when it comes to the garden but she couldn’t name half of what’s in front of her, towering above the detritus of her desk, exploding out of the vase as if just recently detonated.

Serena looks at Evie, their faces – surprised, delighted, just a touch giddy – the mirror of one another. Evie nods towards the card tucked into a stem at the front of the arrangement, and Serena plucks it out. She reads it in silence, the light in her eyes Evie’s only clue as to the words written within.

“They’re from Bernie, aren’t they?” Evie says, before turning back to the flowers, fingertips carefully tracing the shapes of the more unusual blooms.

“They are indeed from Bernie,” Serena replies, her tone lovingly firm, as if she’s talking about a naughty puppy. She takes the laptop and places it on the desk facing her own, opening it up for Evie to use. They’re both still looking at the flowers, the scent of them making the room a bit heady.

“Do you think someone will ever send me flowers like that on Valentine’s Day?” Evie asks, though she sounds as if she doubts anyone will.

Serena can hardly blame her, she can scarce believe it herself. “One day,” she says, fingers caressing the card in her pocket.

*

“Hello?” Bernie picks up after the first ring. Serena can just make out a news channel playing in the background for a second before it is switched off.

“You are the most ridiculous woman in the world, you know that, don’t you?”

Bernie chuckles softly. “The, ah, the delivery arrived, then.”

“Well they had to take a wall out to get them in,” Serena jokes; is rewarded with the sound of Bernie’s laughter close by her ear. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” There’s a pause before either speaks again. Sometimes they just need to take a moment, like to let the other’s presence settle in the room with them. “Did you read…” Bernie tails off, feels needy for asking.

“I did,” Serena says, her other hand reaching up to cup the bottom of her phone. “And I, well, I love you.”

Down the line, there’s an intake of breath. Serena thinks she might never have said the words without making Bernie gasp very quietly like this, though she has said it hundreds of times. [“Does it scare you?” Serena has asked her. “Not anymore,” Bernie has replied, shaking her head. “It’s just… it’s a gift. And you’ve chosen to give it to me.”]

Before Bernie can say the words back, Serena shares the day’s big news. “I finally met Greta, today.”

“Oh?” Bernie has heard all about the cancelled plans and Serena’s feelings on the matter.

“She was admitted to the ward – some breathing difficulties, nothing serious,” Serena adds as Bernie sputters on the other end of the line. “And it turns out, she’s pregnant.”

“No! Serena! That’s, that’s…” It is so many things. Bernie knows how important family is to Serena, has listened to her partner berate herself for the fissures that have opened up between her and Jason during the months away, has assured her that they can be healed. And a new life, now; not to replace the one extinguished, never that, but a new life nonetheless. A new branch on their oddly-shaped little family tree. “Put me on screen?”

Serena taps FaceTime and Bernie’s face springs onto the screen quickly enough to catch her pushing tears from her eyes with the back of her thumb. She’s smiling, but Serena knows this has quashed any last hopes that either of them might have had about them sharing any of Nairobi, or East Africa, or wherever Bernie ends up after that.

“You’re going to be a ‘Great Aunt’!” is all Bernie can manage, her words wet, her eyes roving adoringly over Serena’s face.

“So are you!”

They grin doltishly at each other before they both begin to laugh, tears rolling down their cheeks.

“She’s about 20 weeks,” Serena says, dabbing the corners of her eyes as she calms down. “I don’t think I want to be a ‘Great Aunt’, though. It sounds so _old_ , Bernie. I can almost feel the wrinkles going on just thinking about it.”

Bernie looks at her reprovingly. “We’ve talked about this, Campbell, and you know you don’t look a day over 35” – she breaks off to pull a silly face that makes Serena chortle – “but I’m sure you can go on being ‘Auntie Serena’, can’t you?”

“No doubt I can,” Serena says. They talk for over an hour about the parents-to-be, about Cam and Morven (“just think,” Serena says, her words filled with implication; “ _don’t_ ” Bernie replies, wagging a finger at the screen). Serena asks about progress at the hospital, hears about the RTC victim who kept Bernie busy today. Bernie asks about Ric, and Oliver, and Dom, but eventually her eyes droop and her shoulders begin to creep up to her ears and Serena knows the signs.

“How long til you have to be up?”

Bernie looks at the clock on the wall to her left. “’Bout five and a half hours. It’s fine, Serena.”

“It’s not fine, Bernie. You can’t run on fumes, no matter how macho you think you are.” Serena is deadly serious, though she can’t help but smirk at the memories attached to that word. “I’ll still be here tomorrow.”

It’s barely a beat but they both feel it, a discrete moment in time containing those words and their echo; Serena licks her lips, Bernie blinks, and then it’s gone.

“I meant it, Serena,” Bernie says, pulling up the covers and turning from the window.

“I know you did.” Serena’s gaze flits across Bernie’s features, taking her in. “And that’s why I love you. Sleep tight, sweetheart.”

“I love you too. So much. ’Night.”

They each kiss a fingertip and press it to the screen, a touch only half-imagined, before the call ends.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, by John Donne, which I like to think provided some inspiration for Bernie's note to Serena. What exactly she wrote, well, that's between them, isn't it?
> 
> https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44131/a-valediction-forbidding-mourning


End file.
